Tuesday, 24 March 2015

Review of Better Call Saul

We are now eight episodes into Vince Gilligan’s prequel to "Breaking Bad", “Better Call Saul”, which concerns the exploits of the
wheeling-and-dealing titular lawyer, a character portrayed by Bob Odenkirk, who
after his first appearance in Season 2 quickly became a fan favourite.

His position in the original show was of the Shakespearean
fool, and a sort of moral half-way point between evil (main character Walter
White) and good (all those standing in his way). His waiting room, generally
stocked with ne’er-do-wells, vagrants, drug addicts and prostitute-looking
types was often a punchline after or setup before his shady dealings with the
(self-made) drug kingpin. He was only ever known through his business with
Walt, but even then he was a fairly fully-realised character; by turns a
somewhat pathetic, fast-talking con artist, monetarily motivated and morally
conflicted yet good at heart (whatever that means in this world). That Saul was
not even his real name added an element of theatricality which fit his
character quite well.

The spin-off has been successful. Taking place some years
before "Breaking Bad", it charts Saul (now called Jimmy McGill)’s rise to legal
power. That’s, and this is not a complaint per
se, it. It is just showing how he came to be one of the iconic characters
of the show.

Within this remit, the show is fantastic. It’s emotionally
involving, has strong, well-drawn characters, the plot-lines are well-written
and convincing. The show is relentless in its presentation of Saul’s
opportunism. As with "Breaking Bad", it prefers the slow-burn to the flashy
exposition; we are drip-fed bits and pieces about how Jimmy got into the
profession, and the show even hands a lot of time to Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan
Banks), another popular figure, a sort of perennially crabby handyman, forever doing
the nitty gritty of his superiors. Again, we only ever got to know him by proxy
through the inner workings of the meth empire, but here his character, and how
he came to be, are laid open for us. It’s a sad arc, and it does lend an extra
poignancy to the already poignant scenes of Mike with his family.

And yet, despite this, "Better Call Saul" is not a Great Show
in the way "Breaking Bad" is, and in all honesty I doubt it could have ever been.
There are a number of reasons, the primary one being that there simply isn’t as
much at stake. In "Breaking Bad", everything was at stake; indeed, no more and no
less than one man’s soul, the eternal struggle between good and evil. The show reached
a curious Milton-esque perfection in its presentation of morality. Superficially,
the show might have been about a meth empire, but Walt could have equally been
a pimp, a politician, a movie producer. The meth business always played second
fiddle to the characters; proof of this is everywhere, from the way the
meth-making always played out in 90 second montage, or even how Walt’s eventual
rise to power, everything he’d fought for, was conveyed in all of five minutes,
again of montage. More time was given each episode to his arguments with
Skyler, his quasi-paternal relationship with lackey Jesse, the manipulations of
power with his superiors. Meth is not a good barometer of evil, but other characters
are; that’s what the show is really about.

The continually evolving visual style was another signifier
of this; this was a show unafraid to present things in a sometimes gothic,
sometimes surreal, sometimes horrifying way, when the subject matter saw fit.

And whilst there is no doubt that “Saul” takes place in the
same universe (the show does look equally as beautiful as “Bad”), it is simply
not of the same calibre. This is evident in how it spends much, much more time
on the minutiae of Saul’s cases; there are times when the show more resembles a
legal drama like Boston Legal, as opposed to a spin-off of one of the great
morality plays of our time.

These are not cons necessarily; I found myself incredibly
involved in Saul’s attempts to bring down a care home rinsing its citizens of
money through overcharging and very, very small print. But where I like Saul,
and find him endearing, and think it refreshing to see a character who is
honest-to-god good at heart, he isn’t consistently fascinating in the way Walt
was, his machinations are simple as opposed to cryptic and debatable. It’s all
there in the text.

This is not to say it needs subtext, or to be deep, or
anything like that. The show purports to show the journey of one character, and
it does that very well, far better than most shows out there. Gilligan is a
genius, that much can be said. And not everything can be great; where would be
the fun in that? These are just observations, not criticisms. Indeed, my only
criticism of the show is that thus far it has a relatively limited pool of
stories, and I hope it opens up a little before the season’s end, at risk of
stagnation. But again, I am sure Gilligan knows exactly what he is doing, so
this doesn’t worry me much. The show is making the best of what it has. And there
are many shows which could never even dream of being as good as "Saul".

If anything, one should just take this moment to re-appreciate "Breaking Bad", what it did right, the bravery of the choices the makers took,
the sheer lightning-in-a-bottle quality, that indefinable aspect. And then be
glad that there are still interesting stories to be told from its world.